Kingfox

Discussed the game with the two students working the helpdesk while nabbing a donut. One joked that he’d ask where I was, but it being an open ended game, that wouldn’t matter. But despite it being an open ended game, we realized we were all on the same exact side quest, and on the same step of the same side quest.

That being said, it’s fun. Expected it to be a bit bigger, but I’m used to the scope of the past two four three. Combat’s fun, not at all what I feared. The FPS-ish post-apocalyptic feel has me thinking I’m playing Half-Life 3 more often than Fallout 3, but that’s just a mental association with theme and stylization. So far, having only played it for an evening, I dig.

Want to know what graye‘s dressing up as for Halloween? MTV has the scoop!
Sorry, yeah, I know it’s old. But it’s MTV, so it’s like sorta new and different but not really and I’m just gonna go ahead and shut up now.

I’ve got a long history as a gamer. Those of you who know me well, know that. Beyond early Pong/Atari/ColecoVision/Commodore memories, it was the Apple ][ that really got me into gaming. And while the submarine simulator that took half an hour to load and the Olympic games with their tinny rendition of the Soviet anthem were fun, it was role playing games that hit me hardest. Eternal Dagger, picked up on the way back from a family trip to upstate NY, really bit me in a major way. Once we got an 8088 IBM compatible PC the SSI “gold box” games wasted away many of my evenings. I still have vivid memories of clearing out certain sections of Phlan (particularly Sokol Keep) while listening to Metallica’s …And Justice For All. The Ultima series, when I finally got into them through Ultima III for the NES, would end up becoming a major influence on my development.

But Wasteland was always my favorite.

It was a post-apocalyptic RPG, where you played a squad of desert rangers tasked with bringing order to the chaos and ultimately saving the world. Witty humor, beautifully written jokes and plot points, and vast improvements over the Bard’s Tale engine that had already wasted so many of my evenings. Bard’s Tale III was a wonderful game that kept me hooked from world to world, but Wasteland kept me hooked and replaying the same world over and over again. What originally hooked me on cybersphere were the Wasteland references.

My first play through was rather rocky. I wandered north into Darwin Village, way out of my league. Then I tried to actually assault the Citadel instead of get around it. Finally, I found challenges appropriate to my level, and ultimately fought through the Las Vegas sewers through a painful war of attrition. When all was said and done, I was proud to have beaten that game. One summer, I played Wasteland over and over and over again, resetting the game world and keeping my characters. I had it down pat, and could cut shortcuts to beat the final area in no time at all. By the time the summer was over, my characters were a group of grizzled veterans who could walk into Vegas and beat the Scorpitron apart with their bare hands.

Years later, I was excited to hear about Fallout, the spiritual successor to Wasteland. Sure, there had been the Wasteland sequel Fountain of Dreams, but we’d all like to forget that one. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 both came out during my initial time at drewuniversity as a student, and I played through the latter in my quadmate’s room while he and his girlfriend watched television. From the epic intro, I was hooked. War never changes under the cut.

“Long story short, if it’s got a battery and a switch, it must be turned off.”

“If your travels plans do not include Newark tonight, this is your last chance to get off.”

In a town I’ve never been to before in my life, thousands of miles from my roots. Dinner with two friends last night, drinks with three more tomorrow night, and meeting yet another friend the following day.

I’m just glad so many guildies live here. Between this and Blizzcon, I’ll have met over half a dozen out of the hundreds. Slowly making a dent.

---

If someone gets you with a sticker promoting next year’s SIGUCCS, take a shot.
If they say, “if it’s your first time here, you don’t have to go to every session. If you’re returning, please try to go to at least one.” Take a shot.
If someone clearly hasn’t tested out their presentation’s additional components (video, etc), take a shot. If it’s the opening or closing speaker, take three.
If people bring up last year’s tofu travesty, take a shot.
If someone talks about how cold Edmonton was, take a shot.
If two people try to relate while one’s supervising 250 students for a major state school while the other’s supervising 6 students for a tiny rural private school, take a shot.
If your Birds Of a Feather session runs over, take a shot.
If someone makes a snarky comment about the operating system in question when the speaker has problems displaying their presentation, take a shot.
If you see someone you’ve met at at least four different SIGUCCSes, talked to at least a handful of times, and you’re still looking at each other’s name badges? Take a shot.
If you find someone with the same exact technological/administrative/whatever problem you have, take a shot.
If you’re at a presentation and think, “Wow, we did this, I didn’t know I could write a paper about it!”, take a shot.
If you can sum up a paper in two lines, take a shot.
If you learn far more during the Q&A session than during the presentation, take a shot.
If the presentation title is yet another refence to the conference’s theme, take a shot.

Yeah, that’s my SIGUCCS drinking game so far.

Every year, there seems to be some hot topic. The topic that there’s at least a few papers about, and the sessions are packed with people sitting outside trying to hear. The “Birds Of a Feather” (BOF) sessions are all about it, and those discussion sessions again fill rooms.

Last year, it was Vista. A couple of years ago, it was student employee management. Before that, it was imaging. The year before that, it was spyware.

No idea what this year’s hot SIGUCCS topic is, as of yet. We’ll see.

---

EDIT: Figured it out. It’s student employees. Those BOFs are packed, there’s multiple BOFs about “managing a helpdesk”, “managing student employees”, “training student employees”, etc. Guess that’s the topic du jour.

windexcowboy notes that one prior year, before I started going yearly, it was all about choosing or setting up a trouble ticket tracking system.

---

EDIT DEUX: At this conference, I’m not the only long haired fella. By a long shot. There’s tons of my people here. And Canadians. Including a Canadian who cured his own bacon from pigs a friend raises. But yeah, lots of long haired university IT people.

Currently we’re discussing how bad the food was last year. The horrible tofu dish is what people kept on talking about last year after it was served Monday for lunch, and it’s still a hot topic this year. Wow that was some bad tofu. “Food is very important for IT people.”

Want to follow my fanboy gushings and snarky comments? I’ll be twittering them at http://twitter.com/Kingfox

Right now still on the store line, watching the opening ceremony, kinda like last year.

I’d tell you to check out my Flickr feed for pictures, but my hotel wireless keeps on bombing out mid-upload.

Ran into gamers in EWR, LAX, and everywhere I’ve been so far. Been enjoying guildie homebrew and cooking, and look forward to all that I’ll experience here this year.

And posing for a picture on the Frozen Throne. Unf.

For a while now, I’ve done LJ polls soliciting anonymous comments before taking a flight. The idea was originally stolen from creepingivy a few years ago, and I’ve kept on doing it regularly.

Fourteen months ago, while leaving for last year’s Blizzcon, I did the usual. Someone let me know they were single. Immediately, a piece of wisdom from a good friend came to mind – no one lets you know a change in their relationship status unless they intend you to do something about it. Turns out, she had no such thing in mind, and was still working through things on her end. But after returning from Blizzcon, I got talked into giving it a shot and asking her out by maidoftheshore. We discussed this after last year’s MP3 Experiment, as I walked around Manhattan chatting with people on the phone. I finally asked her out, and even invited her to last year’s handout party, but ultimately our first date was a day after that – a month after the LJ poll was posted.

Thirteen months later, and jedimentat and I are still together. I love her dearly, and am really glad I posted that LJ poll. And asked her out.

As the year wraps around, I’m often reminded of last year’s events. This year, she did go to the handout party, and even helped out at handout. Instead of calling everyone about her after the MP3 Experiment this year, I called her. And now, packing for Blizzcon, I’ve got a loving email in my inbox from her instead of a poll answer that makes me pause for thought.

But, so as not to break tradition, here’s the usual poll. What’s something you would regret not telling me?

And hey, if there’s something you want to tell someone else? Don’t wait.